Saturday, December 31, 2016

The HOF Case for (Almost) Every Player on the 2017 Ballot

The title's misleading: I've made a case for 19 players, and there's 34 players on the 2017 ballot. And I haven't really "made a case" for any of them (other than Barry Bonds, who I consider a no-brainer).

All I've done is listed each player's career rankswithin his generation. There are two generations of players on the ballot, Boomers (two) and Gen-Xers (thirty-two). Players who don't rank in the top 10 in their generation in any reasonably-meaningful statistical category aren't listed.

A couple more caveats: players' ranks are by generation, not by position. So even though Pudge Rodriguez is probably the greatest catcher of Generation X, he only ranks in the top 10 of a couple categories, and then just barely, because he's competing with all batters in his generation.

Also, pitchers need 1,000 innings to qualify for rate statistics, which is a total only a handful of career relievers reach anymore. So even though Billy Wagner only pitched 186 fewer innings than Trevor Hoffman, Wagner is on the wrong side of the 1,000-inning threshold, and thus doesn't qualify for rate stats (even though many of his rate stats are better than Hoffman's).